Select Written traces of the Buddhist past: Mantras and Dhara is in Indonesian inscriptions Written traces of the Buddhist past: Mantras and Dhara is in Indonesian inscriptions

This article examines a group of ten Indonesian inscriptions citing a range of gathas, mantras and dhara is. The texts, contextualized and in some cases read and identified for the first time, underline the pan-Asian character of Buddhism and the integral place the Indonesian archipelago once held in the ancient Buddhist world. The identification of the sources of several of these texts in known Sanskrit scriptures raises the question whether some of these texts, none of which survives as such in the archipelago, were once transmitted there in manuscript form.